West Coast list boss Rohan O’Brien is confident that the Eagles can convince Melbourne ruckman Luke Jackson to join the club this off-season.
Jackson, 20, is a Perth native and requested a trade home earlier this week with both Fremantle and West Coast keen on bringing in the big man.
While the Dockers have long been considered the front-runners, O’Brien says the Eagles will put their best foot forward after he was asked by SEN’s Tim Gossage whether his club was now aggressively pursuing the Demon.
“Absolutely,” O’Brien replied on SEN WA Breakfast.
“There’s an air of confidence that we think we can convince him and hopefully get the deal done.
“But as I’ve said, opportunities like Luke don’t come around very often so when they do come along you’d be remiss not to explore them and put your best foot forward.”
Having well and truly lived up to the hype after being taken at pick No.3 in the 2019 National Draft, reports have suggested that the Demons will request two top-10 picks for the youngster.
While the Eagles hold the coveted pick No. 2 in this year’s draft, O’Brien says that selection won’t be a part of discussions “at this stage”.
“At this stage Tim, no it’s not,” O’Brien said in response to whether pick No.2 is on the table.
“We think we’re well-placed with a range of opportunities.
“If we get the opportunity to trade for Luke, we can split selections to generate more, we’ve got future selections and there’s player trades.”
O’Brien says that while he and his team are yet to contact Melbourne or Jackson’s management they won’t be “gun shy” in negotiations.
“We haven’t spoken to Melbourne yet at all, I’ll contact Tim Lamb in the coming days and start working through that,” O’Brien said.
“But we also need to get in front of Luke and his management to find out their position as well and put our case forward to hopefully convince him that we’re the right club to come to.
“In terms of a trade, we’re not gun shy at all.”
While the Eagles will aggressively pursue Jackson, Lamb says that won’t come at the cost of completely ignoring the draft as the club looks to “replenish” its list by bringing in a group of young players.
“We’ve publicly stated that we’re going through a phase now where we’re trying to replenish our list through the draft,” O’Brien said.
“We made some decisions around that last year to bring in an extra selection which has put us in a good spot this year.
“We’ll continue down that path, so we’ve got certainly one eye on the draft as our main priority but if opportunities come up for quality players like Luke, we’ll certainly continue to look at that.”
The free agency opens on Friday, September 30, before the 2022 Trade Period begins in earnest on Monday, October 3 and closes on Wednesday, October 12.